Ephrem Endale
Contributer
It was a long line of visibly frustrated people who’ve been waiting for over an hour and nothing has yet happened. The staffs at the place were in on tie since they’ve to sign in or else the next payday wouldn’t be a happy one. However, once they’re firmly placed in their offices the storyline of the ‘disciplined’ worker changes. It’s already mid-morning and nothing has yet started rolling.
Midmorning should have been the time when they have serviced to thirty or forty people. Through some open door and ort glass partition customers meekly waiting for their turns could see the workers were having quite a nice day. They laughed almost at every line each one of them uttered as if they were collection of the most gifted standup comedians. Of course, seeing your fellow human beings happy a world that is becoming very unhappy by the day should be comforting.
Maybe you one of these days might enjoy your day in the sun. The people waiting to be served were observing their part of the social deal by being patient despite the wrong being done to them, while the service providers were acting so irresponsibly.
So, waiting in line, while being a civilized way of doing things, doesn’t always pay back. So at times people might be tempted to use other alternatives like sneaking through the back doors or those under-the-table sort of things. Of course while there can be no plausible justification for illegal and unsocial behavior, sometimes the very question of survival and living to see another day drives people into doing what they normally wouldn’t have done.
Someone must have said by now that life after all is about waiting for your turn and nothing else. Don’t we know that! The sad part is these days as the world gets even messier ‘your turn’ doesn’t come that easily. And that makes the waiting more frustrating and nerve wracking. Much of the time your place in the line is altered without you noticing what was being done. You came before even the birds started chirping and have been giving the number thirty-two card. Somehow fifty people have already gone in and you’re still waiting ‘for your turn.’ where the eighteen people who weren’t even in the line came from one of those low-level ‘mysteries.’
I don’t know the situation these days; but in earlier days at every wedding or other such festivity there used to be those smartly dressed and uninvited people practically bulldozing their way into the halls and tents. They are the ones who consume much of the food and drinks as their own is about the free food and drinks. There is this Amharic term describing such people; “Denkuan Sebari!” that was what they were called. It roughly means the person forces his/her way into an event they are not invited to attend. Well even the most orderly lines of people waiting for services are spoilt by the “Denkuan Sebaris!’ the difference is that these guys don’t bulldoze their way in by themselves as they usually have ‘insider’ help. Others taking your place close to the head of the line seem to have become a crude fact of life these days.
And just like the cream is in the first bites so is the possibility of getting full service which you deserve. By the time your turn comes they have already run out of ID cards! That’s how most of the time credit goes to the “Denkuan Sebaris” while you the one’s the god medals are pushed to the sidelines; sidelines where the heavy curtains shut you completely out!
You’re in a restaurant and all the tables are occupied. They tell to wait just a few minutes and there would be a vacant table or two. Since it’s your favorite s restaurant and you came for a particular dish you relish you don’t mind the fifteen minutes or so. As you’re waiting people you know enter. You’re sitting in an outer chair waiting to be called. After the greetings they ask; “What are you doing at this place?”
“I’m waiting for some table to be vacated. The place is brimming with people as a stadium on the day of like a United/City derby.”
It takes time until they digest the information and once the message has sunk in you’re quizzed; “What do you mean you’re waiting for an empty table.”
“A table where I could…”
“I know that. I’m asking you what you mean waiting for a vacant table!”
“Anything wrong with that” ?
Everything is wrong with that! Things being as they are in our society no wonder people seeing you waiting for some table vacated while you can go to another restaurant are startled out of their wits. The guy is getting on your nerves.
Look waiting for an empty table in restaurants is not something you see often. Years back there was this kitfo craze which partially strangled the city. The craving to dig one’s teeth into that dish was so intense people didn’t mind waiting for ‘their turns.’ Many kitfo houses being not so much of attractions in their designs nothing was near to comfortable. A group of us were in this insanely compact, and yet popular, kitfo house.
Look, without exaggeration your backs and sides touched other persons. It was a very tight existence comfort was sacrificed for the kitfo dish which these days, so they say, costs an arm and a leg. So we were busy eating with very moderate speed and in the meantime chatting over one thing or another. The guys who were crammed at the horrifically narrow door didn’t like it at all. Well in such circumstances what you’re supposed to do is just eat like Armageddon just around the corner and beat the hell out of the place. One very large man in some tone of humor, and bitter humor at that, says; “Hey, we’re hungry and you’re talking!” It was enough to send us into a frenzy of eating. More scared of what the hungry mammoth of a human being would do to us minnows than humane considerations.
Yes, indeed waiting for your turn has become a fact of life you can’t ignore. Of course it seems these days in many places people have become more accustomed to patiently waiting in lines for services. Look at the taxi lines. Some days for whatever reasons the minibuses come in very frustrating succession. The lines of would-be passengers snacking around corners and the merciless sun pounding humanity like it never did you can imagine how ‘waiting for your turn’ could be memory that you’d prefer to forget. And here too one way or another the “Denkuan Sebari!” spoil the show.
The Ethiopian Herald 5 February 2023